Synopsis: The Enterprise is caught in the same predicament that killed the crew of an ancient starship a millennia before.
In “Booby Trap,” Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge was able to devise a way to free the Enterprise from this peril, that for every bit of energy that the vessel generates to free herself from the trap an ever-increasing amount of lethal radiation is released into the atmosphere. But La Forge’s initial plan required giving over control of the Enterprise to the ship’s computers, which Captain Jean-Luc Picard was unwilling to do. So, in the end, Picard freed the Enterprise from the booby trap by letting go of almost all her power and then almost with no engine activation, weaving through obstacles in an asteroid belt and guiding her gently into open space and freedom. He then turned the vessel around and fired on the relic ship so that no other vessel would be trapped here.
A booby trap can be perceived in depth and archetypal psychological terms as a bit of Eros-driven unconscious material that slips into the awareness of the Logos-driven conscious ego through a complex. And much as in Star Trek anti-matter must be contained, the ego’s initial response is that the unconscious material must be repressed. We all have complexes, they seem to develop to protect a wound in the psyche, but when they are not avoided but acknowledged and integrated into the ego, much as Picard guided the Enterprise through the obstacles in the asteroid belt, then the psyche is made stronger and more whole. Unfortunately, unlike a thousand-year-old spaceship that can be destroyed so that she will no longer pose a threat, complexes cannot be completely irradicated, but their presence can be made less fraught.
Original post created 28 July 2021
mydailysoultrek 